Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/388

 democratic than the best of the bourgeois parliamentary republics. We organized a dictatorship of the proletariat, supported by the poorest peasants, and inaugurated a widely-planned system of Socialistic reconstruction. In millions and millions of workers in all countries we have awakened faith in their powers and kindled the fires of their enthusiasm. We have sent out in all directions the call of the workers' international revolution. We have thrown down the gauntlet to the imperialistic robbers of all countries.

And in a few days an imperialistic robber, falling upon us, who are unarmed, has cast us to the ground. He has forced us to sign an incredibly oppressive and humiliating peace,—our punishment for having dared, if only for one short moment, to free ourselves from the iron bonds of the imperialistic war. The robber strangles and chokes and dismembers Russia with all the greater fury, the more threatening he perceives rising before him in his own country the spectre of the impending workers' revolution.

We were forced to sign a "Peace of Tilsit." There is no reason for deceiving ourselves as to that. We must have the courage to look straight in the face of this bitter truth. We must sound to the depths, completely, the whole abyss of defeat and humiliation into which we have now been cast. The better we understand this, the harder and firmer will become our will to free ourselves, to rise again from slavery to independence; the more determined will become our unbending resolve, at whatever cost, to raise Russia from her present poverty and weakness, to make her rich and powerful in the true sense of the words.

And this Russia may become, for we still have left enough territory and natural resources to supply each and every one of us, if not with a super-abundance, yet with a sufficient supply of the means of subsistence. We have enough in natural riches and in labor-power, as well as in the impetus that our great revolution has communicated to our national productive forces—to create a really rich and powerful Russia.

Russia may become such if we cast aside all discouragement and all oratory, if we strain every nerve and tighten every muscle, if we understand that salvation is possible only by the path of international Socialist Revolution on which we have entered. To advance on this road, undaunted by defeat, to build up, stone by stone, the firm foundation of the Socialist society, to work with untiring hand at the creation of discipline and self-discipline, at strengthening, at all times and in all places, the organization, orderliness, efficiency and harmonious co-operation of the forces of the entire nation, a central